Biographies: Sri Simha, the Lion of Dzogchen

Sri Simha, or Simhaprabha as he may have been known, was born in a noble
family in the Cina Valley of northern India. He lived during the 8th century.

The location of the "Land of Cina" has been the cause of considerable
confusion for both Tibetan historians and modern Western scholars, to
the extent that even Dudjom Rinpoche's The Nyingma School of Tibetan
Buddhism perpetuates the error of stating that Sri Simha came from
China. Evans-Wentz, just as incorrectly, described Sri Simha as a Burmese
guru. Dr. Hanson-Barber places Sri Simha in Central Asia, while Dowman
has suggested that he was Khotanese. Tulku Thondup, author of Masters
of Meditation and Miracles, describes Sri Simha birthplace as "a
city called Shokyam on Sosha Island1
in China." None of these allocations are correct. To fully appreciate
Sri Simha's background we must briefly digress into the geography of a
mysterious seventh century Himalayan country called Suvarnadwipa and its
southern neighbour, the Kinnaur Valley.

The Golden Matriarchy and the Land of Cina

It is little known that before the Tibetan people swept from the East
into the regions of trans-himalaya, there once was a land in
Western Tibet known by the name of "The Land of Women" (Stirajya).
Because the rivers of this land were rich in gold, this country was also
known as the Golden Land (suvarnadwipa). Yet another name for
this country appears to have been the "Golden Matriarchy" (suvarnagotra).

The ancient Greeks held many myths concerning the Amazons, a tribe of
warrior women, and their land called Amazonia. Dionysus was said to have
encountered them on his travels to India, and supposedly Heracles successfully
fought against them, capturing their queen Antiope. According to Robert
Graves, the term "Amazon" may originally have been an Armenian
word, meaning "moon-woman", a priestess of the Moon-goddess.
Although the Greeks are said to have located the land of the Amazons in
Scythia, on the Black Sea, and it is true that priestesses of the Moon-goddess
on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea were known to have born arms,
it remains uncertain whether the myth originated there. It is just as
probable that tales of a nation governed by a line of queens could have
been passed to the Greeks along the trade routes from India.

As Prof. R. A. Stein says, the Western Land of Women was "a mysterious
region mentioned by Chinese and Indian authors."2
Apparently this matriarchy, with its capital at the Silver Castle of Khyunglung
(east of present day To-lung) in Western Tibet, was the same as the land
of Zang-zung. The latter is the Tibetan name of the land. Zang-zung or
Suvarnadwipa was an ancient Indo-European nation, said to have been ruled
by a royal lineage of women. This matriarchy or queendom once existed
along the valleys of the upper Sutlej and the Indus rivers, from Tirthapuri,
west of Mount Kailash, as far as the borders of modern Ladakh. In Ladakh
itself, matriarchal lineage has been known during various periods of Ladakhi
history. It is likely that Suvarnadwipa once consisted of the whole of
Western Tibet and Ladakh, prior to conquest by the Tibetan people invading
from the east.

Apart from gold and matriarchy, the Golden Land of Suvarnadwipa (or Zangzung)
was famous for manufacturing and exporting to India a peculiarly fine
wool cloth known as cina-patti, or in other words, "fabric
(patti) from Cina." Thus we find in Kautilya, for example,
the mention of Cina as a valley within the territory of Suvarnadwipa,
from whence cina-patti was brought to India. At present this
same extra-fine cloth, no longer manufactured in Suvarnadwipa, but instead
in Kashmir, is known as cashmere.

Prof. Stein is vague in delineating the actual borders of the ancient
land of Suvarnadwipa: "How far [Zang-zung] stretched to the north,
east and west is a mystery," he says. "It seems to have dovetailed
into two countries mentioned by T'ang historians as Lesser and Greater
Yang-t'ung." This only confuses the matter further, since Pelliot
and Tucci consider Yang-t'ung to be Zang-zung itself.

Today, the territory in Tibet that once was ancient Suvarnadwipa, is
more or less a dry barren wasteland. In Sri Simha's era, however, it was
apparently rich, not just in gold, beautiful Amazonian women and fine
cloth, but in verdant gardens, herds of sheep and goat, and apple orchards.

The researches of Marcelle Lalou have sufficiently shown that the territory
of the Indian Kailasa, south of Western Tibet (below Suvarnadwipa), comprising
modern Kinnaur, was known in ancient times as the valley of Cina. Ancient
Cina (or modern Kinnaur), south of the 15,400 ft Shipki Pass (known to
the Tibetans as Sarang-la), was apparently a vassal state of Suvarnadwipa.
In present times this extensive but isolated valley, hemmed in by the
Himalayas, now belongs to India. It is pierced by a major India-Tibet
roadway, originally commissioned by Lord Dalhousie in 1850. The valley
is home to both Buddhist and Hindu temples.

Confusion arose when, in the 9th century,
Tibetans attempted to translate, from the early historical records of
the Dzogchen Tradition, the name "Cina" into their own language.
By that time the Indo-European matriarchy of Suvarnadwipa (or Zang-zung)
had been overrun by Tibet for more than a century. Every vestige of the
land, its people and its language, had long since undergone severe changes.
The name ‘Cina,' referring to the southern district of Suvarnadwipa,
no longer held any meaning for the Tibetan historians. "Cina"
and "Mahacina" were, by the ninth century, almost mythical places.
While "Mahacina", which probably originally meant Central Asia,
came to mean "China" (rGya-nag, the "vast region
where people dress in black" according to the Tibetans), the location
of Cina simply got lost. With time, Tibetans came to believe that "Cina"
was related in some way with "Greater China" (mahacina),
and therefore that Sri Simha was a Chinese sage.

The Kinnauri tribal group is in fact an Indo-European people who, nevertheless,
tend to consider themselves distinct not only from Tibetans but also from
their Indian cousins to the south. Homskad, the language spoken in Kinnaur,
is dispersed into about 12 different dialects. Kinnauris are traditionally
farmers, who adhere to a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist customs, with most
villages having both Saivite Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist temples. The present
culture is probably not much different than when Sri Simha lived there
in the 8th century.

Scholars have also been ambiguous about the location of the town where
Sri Simha was born. All that the Tibetan sources tell us is that it was
named So-khyam, the meaning of which has remained until now uncertain.

So, what are the facts? Well first off, Cina—the land from whence
Sri Simha came— definitely is the Kinnaur Valley, also known as
the Kunnu Valley; a Himalayan district, today within India. Suvarnadwipa
lay to the north of this valley, in what now is Western Tibet. "So-khyam"
is the Tibetan rendering of the name "Su-gnam", the latter a
prosperous village at the nine thousand foot level, deep in the Kinnaur
Valley.3

And the gold? Yes, a large deposit is still there to be mined. The largest
lode may be found at Shok Jalung, on the Tibetan side of the mountains,
and should you possess a dream about going there to seek your own fortune,
we will even give you the precise co-ordinates: latitude 32° 24,'
longitude 81° 34'. There is however, at least one major obstacle for
the hopeful prospector to face: the location is at 16,000 ft above sea
level, and virtually impenetrable.

Now that we have shown where Sri Simha was born, let us return to the
story of his life.

Sri Simha's early religious education

At the age of fourteen Simha, began the classical study of grammer, logic,
art, medicine and law under the direction of a great scholar, Acarya Haribhala
of the Bodhivriksha Monastery in Cina. Then at the age of 18, he went
north into Suvarnadwipa to be enrolled in a collage of higher religious
education.

It is said that while on the journey to the Golden Land of Suvarnadwipa,
the celestrial Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, who embodies the love and compassion
of Buddha, appeared in a pure vision to Simha and said to him: "O
blessed son of noble family, if you wish to attain Enlightenment in a
single lifetime, you should go to Soshadwipa in India." Simha was
certainly deeply affected by this vision, but due to circumstances beyond
his control, he was not able to go to India at that time. The history
of his life says that he first needed to complete his education and study
the secrets of Tantra before he would be ready to travel to Soshadwipa.

Therefore, in Suvarnadwipa he received the novice vows of a Buddhist
monk and began to study scripture and philosophy. At the Five Peaked Mountain4
in Suvarnadwipa he also studied all the exoteric and esoteric Tantras
under the low caste Master Bhelakirti. Upon attaining the age of 20, he
received the full ordination of a Bhikshu. He would remain a monk for
the next thirty years.

It does not say how long Simha stayed at the Five Peaked Mountain, but
while there, we are told that for a second time the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
appeared to him in a vision, and informed him that he should go to Soshadwipa
in India. He therefore made the determination to go, and after about three
years, when all preparations had been made for the journey, he set forth.

We know from the texts that Soshadwipa was the name of a town associated
with a cremation ground called "Cool Grove", to the west of
Bodh Gaya, in the heart of northern India, where the famous guruSri Manjusrimitra is said to have resided.

Sri Simha meets his guru

At Soshadwipa, to the west of Bodh Gaya in India, Sri Simha met the master
Manjusrimitra and was initiated into the teachings of Dzogchen.
It is said that he served his guru for the next twenty-five years and
thus absorbed the full teachings of the Dzogchen path.

"How should one practice according to the system of Dzogchen,"
he asked the Master.

Sri Manjusrimitra answered, "Without making the least effort, just
be. That in itself is the optimal method for the Yogi who has grasped
the View of Absolute-Totality."5

At the end of Sri Simha's twenty-five years of service to his master,
Sri Manjusrimitra passed away. Manjusrimitra did not die as ordinary people
do, but rather, while sitting in the posture of meditation, dissolved
his physical body into pure light, and ascended to the sphere of Absolute
Being, in what is described by the yogis of Tibet as a "Great Ascension"
(pho-wo chen-po). The ancient texts define Great Ascension as
a transformation in which a Yogi or Yogini dissolves the matter of the
body's corporeal form into its component atoms (Lus rdul-phran-du
deng, total dissolution of atomic structure into its matrix) and
the mind into its own ultimate nature, thereby attaining liberation into
primordial original purity.

The master Manjusrimitra's ascension is said to have occurred when he
was in meditation at the great Stupa of Sitavana ("cool grove")
cremation ground in Soshadwipa. Today, this cremation place is located
in a lovely Sal forest not far from Bodh Gaya. On the mountain face above
is a famous cave, with a small monastery occupied by Tibetan monks. Wandering
yogis, both Hindu and Buddhist, still frequent the site.

After Manjusrimitra's passing, so it is claimed, Sri Simha performed
meditation and prayer, calling on his beloved guru. In response, Sri Manjusrimitra
appeared one last time in a fully resurrected body, within a sphere of
luminosity, in the sky above the Stupa at Sitavana. In that resurrected
form, so it is said, he handed Sri Simha a tiny little jeweled casket,
no bigger than a finger-nail in size, containing his last testament. According
to legendary history, this last testament consisted of what is known as
the precious Six
Meditation Instructions.6

The Six Meditation Instructions of Sri Manjusrimitra form a brief text
that has been carefully preserved and passed down from one holder to the
next, in the sacred lineage of the Dzogchen Tradition, to the present
time. It is part of the great treasure of our tradition.

Sri Simha promulgates the Dzogchen teachings in Cina

After attaining full realization, Sri Simha became the principal lineage
holder of the Dzogchen Tradition. He was a master who truly understood
the inner meaning of all the Tantras.

It is also said that Sri Simha went to Bodh Gaya and extracted from the
library of the Diamond-throne Monastery the Pith Instruction (Skt: upadesa,
Tib.: men-ngak-de) of the Dzogchen Tradition that Manjusrimitra
had previously deposited there.
Sri Simha then took the Dzogchen teachings back with him to his home town
in the Cina Valley and there he settled more or less for the rest of his
life, becoming a famous teacher.

The Pith Instructions of Dzogchen consist of esoteric scriptures written
down by Pramodavajra, the guru of Manjusrimitra. Thus the lineage of Dzogchen-holders
is said to descend from Pramodavajra (Tib:
Garab Dorje), to Manjusrimitra (Tib: Jampel She-nyen),
to Sri Simha (Tib: Pel gi Sengge), and then to Sri Simha's two
disciples, Jnanasutra and Vimalamitra. The latter introduced the tradition
into Tibet in the time of the Sage-King Tri-srong Detsen, who reigned
from circa 755 to 797 AD. The transmission of the tradition has ever since
been passed down mainly through the Nyingmapa school in Tibet.

It is explained that Sri Simha divided the Pith Instruction into four
sub-sections, and these are known as the Exoteric Cycle, the Esoteric
Cycle, the Secret Cycle, and the Supreme Secret Cycle. Before his own
death he deposited copies of the first three cycles in a rock cut crypt
beneath the Bodhivriksha Temple of Sugnam (Sokyam) in the land
of Cina. The texts of the Supreme Secret Cycle, however, he hid separately
within the pillar of the "Gate of a Myriad Blessings". It is
difficult, however, to clarify as to where these places in the Kinnaur
Valley may have actually been. Perhaps future archeological work in the
region will help one day to give us a better insight into the facts underlying
the half-legendary and half-historical records of early Dzogchen?7

It is further stated that Sri Simha conferred the first three cycles
of Dzogchen instruction on Vimalamitra and the supreme esoteric cycle
on Jnanasutra. This implies that Jnanasutra alone received the complete
or final teaching.

Near the end of his life, Sri Simha was invited by "the King of
the land of Li" to give teachings. The Tibetan transcription for
the name of this king is Paljin, which roughly means "Glorious Provider".
The accounts state that Sri Simha flew through the air to the land of
Li, riding on the back of a white lion, shaded by a royal parasol that
was held up by a group of six angels (devas) or spirit-beings
(yakshas).

Most Tibetan scholars assume that the land of Li is Khotan, thousand
of miles distant in Central Asia, since "Li" became the common
Tibetan name for Khotan. But we know that in earlier times the Tibetan
name "Li" referred to Nepal, and it is much more likely that
Nepal is the place where Sri Simha would have traveled, since the latter
is not such a great distance from Kinnaur, in the same Himalayan chain
of mountains. What is more, the biography of the yogi-master Vajra-Humkara
informs us that he met and became a student of Sri Simha in a forest grove
in Nepal. Sri Simha eventually died in that land. We also know that the
master Padmasambhava, who later was
to enter Tibet via Nepal, was a disciple of Sri Simha.

There are various texts attributed to Sri Simha that have been preserved
in Tibetan. Especially, there is an extremely esoteric and profound commentary
on the Heart Sutra that is ascribed to him, which typically interprets
the sutra in a non-dualist, uniquely Dzogchen manner. What is
typical of Sri Simha's style is an ability to present the classical teaching
of Buddhism according to its more esoteric meaning.
At his death, it is also said that Sri Simha dissolved his body into rainbow
light, similar to Manjusrimitra, and that he left a last testament, known
as The Seven Nails.
This too has remained a vital text of the Dzogchen Tradition, handed down
to the present. Jnanasutra, who was not present (he was in either Kinnaur
or Bodh Gaya at the time of his master's death), is said nevertheless
to have received this last testament from the hand of Sri Simha in person,
who appeared bodily before him.

Such is the basic account of the life of the sublime Dzogchen master
Sri Simha.

Footnotes

1.
"Sosha Island" is Soshadwipa, Tibetan Sosha-gling, which in
all accounts is located just west of Bodh Gaya, and certainly not in China.
But Sokyam is not said to be "in Soshadwipa". On the contrary,
it is always located in the accounts as being a town in the land of Cina.
Tulku Thondup appears to have confused the term Ser-gling (Tibetan for
Suvarnadwipa) with Sosha-gling.

3. The name "So-khyam" does
not mean anything in the Tibetan language. It is obvious a transliteration
of a non-Tibetan word or name. Prof. Hanson-Barber, in an unjustified
attempt to extract a Tibetan meaning from the two syllables, read "So"
as the Tibetan "bso", i.e., "to spy", and "khyam"
as "courtyard". Thus devising an etymology that makes no sense,
he suggested that Sokhyam may have meant "garrison". In a further
leap of speculation, he then connected that with Chinese references to
the Four Garrisons of the West, which existed in Central Asia. However,
the word "so" could just as well have meant "tooth"
in Tibetan. That the Tibetan So-khyam is orthography for ancient Su-gnam
is supported by the itinerary of Tagtsen Repa’s 17th century journey
through the valley of Kinnaur/Kunnu. The latter mentions the towns of
Namgyal (Skt: vijaya), Sa (modern Sasu), Kanam, and So-rang (modern
Sarahan), as well as Sugnam itself.

4. Tib: Ri-wo tse-nga, the
Five Peaked Mountain of Manjusri. The Sanskrit name is Pancasikhara-parvata.
The name and location of this mountain has long been the subject of much
confusion, since there is a very famous (but historically late) Five Peaks
(Wu-t’ai-shan) in the northern Shansi province of China.
Originally Manjusri's full name was Pancasikha Manjughosa, which means
the Bodhisattva with gentle voice (manju-ghosa) who is adorned
with a five crested (panca-sikha) crown. As explained by Prof.
Snellgrove, "In the Manjusrimulakalpa [the term pancasikha]
is then understood as a gesture of the hand, representing the power of
the Bodhisattva. Later when his cult reached China, it was understood
as Manjusri of the Five Peaks, and so it was assumed that he must have
originally come from China of the Five Sacred Mountains. This legend even
reached India, and so still later we find Indians setting out on the long
journey across central Asia to China on pilgrimage to the abode of Manjusri."
See: Snellgrove, Buddhist Himalaya, Oxford 1957.

However, long before the creation of the sacred site
in China, the location of five mountain peaks dedicated to the Bodhisattva
Manjusri already was well established in Khotan (5th-6th
century), and prior to Khotan an even earlier Five Peaks existed in Nepal.
Each country where worship of Manjusri developed, wished to have its own
sacred site. Thus each country designated a special group of five peaks
as sacred to that Bodhisattva.

The Five Peaks referred to in the life of Sri Simha
is specifically said to have been in the country of Suvarnadwipa, which
we know consisted of Western Tibet, in the region of Gu-ge. The Five Peak
Mountain of Suvarnadwipa is in fact at the source of the river Gyanima,
or Ganima, near the present day community of Gyanima Cakra. Fortunately
we can locate the sacred mountain in question in the itinerary of the
travels of Go-tseng-pa (c. 1240 AD), entitled rGyal.ba. rGod.ts'ang.pa.
gNon.po. rDo-rje'i. rnam.thar.mt'ong. ba. don. ldan. nor.bu'i. phreng.ba.,
where he clearly describes passing by the Five Peaks of Suvarnadwipa in
proximity to the sacred site of Tirthapuri. Tirthapuri is on the north
side of the Sutlej to the west of Kailash and the sacred mountain referred
to by Go-tsang-pa is on the south. Tirthapuri is therefore undoubtedly
the location of the place where Sri Simha studied Tantra with the low-caste
master Belakirti. What is more, Tirthapuri, where three great valleys
converge, is well known as one of the 24 holy tantric sites of India.

5. Absolute Totality is the essential
meaning of the Tibetan term Dzogchen (Skt. Mahasamdhi). Dzogchen is short
for Dzogpa Chenpo, where Dzogpa means complete, all-inclusive, totality;
and Chenpo means great or absolute. It is called "absolute"
because nothing exists outside of it, and it is called "complete"
because it is the whole totality of Samsara and Nirvana as one. It carries
virtually the same meaning as Mahamudra, the Great Seal, which signifies
the "seal" of non-duality. The term is frequently mistranslated
in America as "Great Perfection". To speak of great perfection
is to imply that there is something initially imperfect that then attains
to perfection. Absolute Totality, however, means that everything is already
one whole. This whole, from the beginning, is already perfect, complete
and non-dual. That is the true state of Reality, which it is up to the
yogi to realize.

6. Tib: sGom.nyams.drug.pa,
the Six Meditation
Instructions, are also known as the six Diamond Verses. Vairocana
brought these to Tibet in the late 8th century. Vairocana was a Tibetan
disciple of Sri Simha.

7. In Tibetan the Gate of Myriad Blessings
is bkra.shis.khri.sgo (pronounced Tashi Tri-go). In
Sanskrit this presumably would be Mangalakotidwar. This and the Bodhi-tree
(Bodhivriksha, Tib: byang.chub. shing. gi. lha. khang.)
temple appear to be separate places that once existed in the Valley of
Cina. It is possible however, that the gate in question was the main gate
or entrance building of the first named temple, which one would presume
was located in Sugnam.